The market opportunity for mobile apps in the healthcare enterprise is currently $100 million, according to a November 2010 report from Chilmark Research. Because of the rapid evolution of mobile devices, physician demand, and the healthcare enterprise’s need to improve quality and efficiencies, the market will climb to $1.7 billion in three years time, Chilmark Research predicts. The core focus of Chilmark’s report is on enterprise mHealth apps that link into a healthcare enterprise’s HIS including EHR, CPOE, eRx, CDS and Charge Capture. Chilmark predicts that these types of apps will be “competitive differentiators” for healthcare enterprises who seek to not only meet meaningful use requirements and structure themselves for payment reform, but also to improve internal workflow for higher efficiency.

What is the latest from the FDA on the status of using smart mobile device as diagnostic tools and to administer treatment? I know there are plenty of apps out there, but how many of them are actually “medical devices”?

http://www.policymedical.com PolicyMedical

Hi Chris,
We’re a policy management software vendor for hospitals and we’ve had our eyes on the mHealth market for a while now. We’re on the brinks of developing a mobile application for our system, and we know that the mHealth sector moves fast and comes out with new trends every week, so summary posts like these really help. I’m also curious as to what the latest from the FDA is.
Cheers,
Daisy

Didier Thizy

I co-authored a paper in late 2010 called “11 Disruptive Technologies That Will Change the Face of Healthcare” (http://tinyurl.com/2u9hs87). In essence, the predications revolved around the growing use of mobile phones and tablets in health institutions, electronic and personal health records, unified communications, videoconferencing, clinical decision support and cloud computing.

It’s exciting to see how these same predictions are now being forecast by analysts whose detailed research and market sizing makes the near-term future seem even more real.

The one thing I’m not seeing addressed in this article is the security risk and hacking potential of wireless communications. I saw a study just recently indicating that even implantable medical devices are at a substantial risk for security breach by hackers. http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/nation_world/article_9053e654-d047-11e0-a6f1-001cc4c002e0.html I can’t imagine this wouldn’t have an impact on the perhaps too-optimistic adoption rates that are forecasted here.

Howard Jonathan Miller

Hi Didier,
Sadly I lost my sister just recently to brain cancer. I believe the over use of cell phones was certainly a contributing factor.Do you know of any companies or mobile devices that are addressing the possible radiation and effects of using mobile devices on the actual users?
I would like to get involved with an organization devoting R&D to this issue.

dlschermd

Daisy, the sector is not moving fast at all. There is a lot of development technologically, but the movement that matters, raising money, getting the government regulators and payers to not just buy into the concept which they have, but to ‘put their money where their mouth is’ and get mHealth really on the go is not happening rapidly at all. This needs to be done. Getting the word out to grass roots consumers about the potential for mHealth as the best kept secret in medicine and wellness needs to happen. and getting good quality clinical trials to ‘sell’ it intellectually to physicians needs to happen as well.
David Lee Scher, MD